Pixiphone Restoration (job#1416)

Tuesday 3 July 2018

First thing every morning I do my administration whilst drinking tea; it is my gentle introduction to the day before I take Archie out for his walk. Most days I have too much too much paperwork to do, so I have to curtail the process and go down into the workshop where I am always busy and actually earn my living. It has been like this for months and months, but all of a sudden the sun starts shining and no one gives a damn about the restoration and repair of percussion instruments, so my email inbox is under control, accounts up to date and tax return done, and I have even cleared the pile of papers. I still want my cups of tea however, so I have been catching up on video editing (always the slow part of the process – as well as writing this text of course) when I cam across this old and complete video. So I uploaded it and here we are…

Before I started it looked like this:

There was a lot to do repairing the box and giving it every chance of surviving for another three generations.

During one of my many London visits I hopped along on my crutches to several art and model making shops looking for the correct colours to keep this little pixiphone looking authentic. I love these sort of pastel shades that were common in the early 20th century.

In the end I did a little bit of tinkering adding a little bit of this and a little bit of that, I even mixed the ivory for the box myself.

And here is the finished article. An expensive and time consuming repair that cost me more to do than I charged, but the decision to take on the job was for reasons of my sanity; I was beginning to be lethargic due to inaction and that was making me feel apathetic and in that direction lies depression and other mental health issues; so I took action and created something of which I am proud and I sincerely hope that it continues to give joy to future generations of little percussionists.